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But, as illustrated by the magazine-cutouts students chose while decorating “health and wellness boxes” last Tuesday at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, inspiration is in the mind of the beholder.
The workshop was one of eight in this year’s White River Valley Supervisory Union Teen Summit, during which eighth- and ninth-graders from Royalton, Bethel, Chelsea, Tunbridge, Rochester and Strafford gathered for a day of activities meant to convey the importance of teamwork, kindness, positive stress-reduction techniques, a flexible mindset and mental and physical health.
Led by Melissa Purdy, the health teacher at Bethel’s Whitcomb High School, the box-decorating workshop was “all about them,” Purdy said. Personalizing the plain cigar boxes with clippings, patterned paper, adult coloring-book pages and inspirational quotes would hopefully give students “something they can go back to and think about in their time of need, or if they need a little boost,” Purdy said. Sometimes, seeing a project you made as an expression of yourself can “remind you who you are.”
Organizers chose resilience as the summit’s unofficial theme in part because of the changes the next school year will usher in for students at the summit, said Amelia Lincoln, a student assistance professional for the White River Valley Supervisory Union and one of the organizers of the day-long event. Under Act 46, the state law requiring small school districts to consolidate with neighboring ones, Bethel and Royalton merged to become the White River Valley Unified School District, while Rochester merged with Stockbridge, and Tunbridge and Chelsea are merging to become the First Branch Unified School District, with Chelsea High also closing.
The teen summit followed a long period of anticipation: It was originally scheduled for March, but a snowstorm forced its postponement. And, because there was no summit held last year, ninth-graders joined the eighth-graders for the day.
The summit opened with a keynote speech from Dia Draper, the director of strategic initiatives at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. Addressing the room of roughly 120 students, Draper, who has also given a number of TEDx talks, posed a question for them to ponder over the course of the day: “What if the worst thing to happen to you … is the best thing to happen to you?”
To illustrate her point, she shared an anecdote. Once, when she was excluded from a game of marbles as a kid because she was a girl, she channeled her frustration into becoming the best marble-player around.
“I beat every boy out of every marble he owned,” she said. “And then I sold them back to them.”
This led her to a realization: “Business is my jam.” Years later, when she was a student at the University of Virginia, this story moved the director of financial aid into taking care of the tuition her family couldn’t pay, a pivotal moment that led her to many opportunities in the future.
“You have a choice,” she said, summarizing the upshot of her story. “You can be a thermostat, or you can be a thermometer.” The difference? A thermometer tells you the temperature. A thermostat does something about it.
“When you’re a thermostat, you’re on a hustle,” Draper said. When you’re a thermostat, “you change the game.”
This metaphor resurfaced in one of the workshops later on, “Health & Wellness,” run by Debby Haskins, a program specialist at the Brattleboro-based Center for Health and Learning with a private practice as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor.
After discussing as a group the meaning of resilience and stress, Haskins passed out a “Resiliency Worksheet,” featuring an image of a thermometer with 10 notches on it. Haskins asked students to imagine the most devastating stressor they could think of, and write it next to the highest notch on the thermometer.
Noting the somber faces around the room as students reflected on this question, Haskins said, “It comes pretty quickly what you think of, and it’s usually pretty intense,” she said. Assigning everyday stressors — a bad test grade, missing the bus — a ranking from 1 to 10 on that thermometer can help put things in perspective by pointing out that one’s stress level might be out of proportion to the “life consequences” of the event.
“It’s not whether or not we have stress in our lives,” Haskins said. “It’s how we deal with it.”
At the end of the workshop, she suggested that students envision themselves lifting the worries out of their own heads, and storing them inside their health and wellness boxes. Creative projects, she noted, are one way to channel one’s negative feelings into positive outlets.
Another workshop focused on the ways in which other coping mechanisms, such as self-medicating with substances, are more harmful. Tunbridge Central School counselor Scott O’Hearn led the workshop “Drug Facts JEOPARDY,” in which students played a trivia game that probed their knowledge of substances in six categories: tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, opiates, e-cigarettes and other drugs. The goal was less about scoring points than about using incorrect answers as teachable moments, he said.
The players found some categories, such as alcohol and marijuana, easier than others. “Opiates” for 200 asked students to name the drug that reverses the effects of an opiate overdose, for example.
Toni Turner, of Bethel, raised her hand. “Is it oxycodone?”
The correct answer was Narcan. “But good guess,” O’Hearn said. “That’s going to come up later on.”
And it did, when another question asked students to name an example of an opiate drug.
“Ritalin?” ventured Alex Lober, of South Royalton. O’Hearn shook his head.
A few more guesses floated around: Percocet, heroin, morphine — and, circling back to Turner’s earlier guess, oxycodone.
Throughout the activity, O’Hearn returned to the theme of why people might develop an addiction to or dependence on a substance, and how the discomfort of withdrawal is so “indescribable … you’re desperate to go back to the thing that makes you feel better.”
He also placed special emphasis on the dangers of e-cigarettes, which he said he was especially concerned about given the popularity of “vaping” among young people (students had no trouble with the question that asked them to name this slang term). But with any habit-forming substance, he said, “the easiest thing is not to start. Except it’s not always easy, is it? It’s hard.”
Asked what their favorite workshop of the day was, most students said “Zumba Plus!”, often expressing pleasant surprise at how much fun they had practicing the dancing exercise.
The workshop also included a discussion of body image, in which students wrote out their personal definitions of the term, to be read anonymously. The answers ranged from “fit and slim,” “round but healthy,” “being confident” and “yeah boy.”
For the day’s closing activity, students huddled around large, shared pieces of paper and quietly wrote out the thoughts the summit raised for them: “Don’t overthink things.” “To put yourself out there.” “To make new friends.”
Among the strongest themes was an optimistic attitude about the next school year under the new mergers. One student wrote that they felt “hopeful for next year,” while another wrote that they looked forward to “meeting new kids next year.” Next to one comment — “Fun making new friends” — there were numerous check marks, “I agrees” and “yeahs.”
Gabe Feeney, of Bethel, embodied many of these sentiments during the day’s final Zumba workshop. As a 10th-grade student helper, he was not obliged to participate, and so he sat on the sidelines, shrugging off calls from his peers to join in.
Eventually, though, he took a deep breath and went up there. Even though he didn’t know the steps, it looked like he was having a good time.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at ejholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.